Perfect
by Framling
Summary: sonfic/deathfic, 1+2+5, and my first ever. When Duo is killed, how will Wufei and Heero take it? Soundtrack courtesy of Maren Ord... Now with Author's Notes, and a couple of grammar mistakes fixed.
1. Perfect (the fic)

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing, nor any of the characters contained herein, except possibly the priest, but I don't really care about him. The song 'Perfect' was written by Maren Ord, the picture is used with both Baby Pen's and the site owner's permission and the Bible quotes are from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. I am not making any profit off of this piece of work.  
  
  
Perfect  
  
  
There's no blood. It's strange, really. The birds aren't singing (how can they be? They've long since flown), but the sun is shining and there's a stream laughing somewhere. I hate the sky for not weeping - and there's no blood. Something this painful, this hideously wrenching, should be filled with blood and thunder.  
  
Behind me lies a twisted heap of black scrap. We knew - yes, we knew - but our best wasn't fast enough. It's a simple matter of physics - total distance divided by average speed equals far too high a number. Even if average speed is redlining it all the way. It was a simple transfer of equipment. Gundam travels from point A to point B, pilot disembarks at point B. But they knew the location of point C, and we knew, and we were too late.  
  
In front of me lies the machine's heart. My heart. Not bloodied, no, but broken and crushed, sprawled on the grass looking at the sky. It was all we could do to get him out of the cockpit after it collapsed around him.  
  
Strange. I'm the one still standing here, analyzing, talking about the physics and the weather of the situation, and Heero's the one on his knees, begging Duo to take just one more tortured breath, to look at him, not to leave him, to keep those cloudy violet eyes of his open. It should be the other way around.  
  
  
/Don't close your eyes  
They may not open/  
  
  
I can hear Duo whispering between whistling gasps. There's blood at last, leaking out between his lips, the only colour left in his face.  
"But 'm... sleepy, 'ro... hurts... wh's 'Fei?" At that, something that was too proud to give in breaks inside me, and I fall to my knees beside Heero. Dimly, I am aware of Quatre and Trowa moving silently away.   
  
"Here I am." Without my permission, my left hand reaches to brush his sweaty bangs off of his face with more tenderness than I knew myself capable of, while my right hand snakes around Heero's waist, hugging him close. I can feel him shuddering. We're both silent - we can't speak.   
  
"G'd. Love you." Those violet eyes search our faces, memorising them, reading the love and anguish written in the set of our jaws. He smiles slightly, apparently satisfied.   
  
His eyelashes hit his cheeks.   
  
/What if they open  
Would you be alive/  
  
For the second time, I have lost part of my soul in a field of flowers and been totally helpless. The part of me that still lives is collapsed against me, sobbing. I didn't realise he ever knew how to cry. I didn't realise I'd remembered.  
  
Heero and I are sitting in a church. We figured Duo was a Christian, despite his nickname. So I'm sitting on a hard wooden bench while a priest who never knew our love does his best to make it better, droning on and on.   
"...there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die..." He seems to believe that the inevitability of death is a comfort. It wasn't time yet.  
/Everyone falls  
But not everyone rises/  
There is a time to die. You die once you're old, once you've loved, once you've finished living. Duo hadn't. He was vibrant still, and I hadn't loved him long enough.   
"... a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..." That's when you die. When you've had your time. Duo had spent far too much time grieving. He'd given us laughter and dance, but it was ripped away from us before we had a chance to learn how, really.  
Beside me Heero sits. He hasn't cried except for that once. He hasn't spoken, either, except for terse answers when questioned. He seems to have slipped back into the soldier mode he used to have; apparently the lover that Duo and I knew cannot handle this anymore. He isn't the same person, without Duo. Neither am I. We aren't the same two who fell in love, such a short time ago. I wish he'd turn back into my dreamer.  
His gaze is riveted to the open coffin just feet from us. The eyes are the only part of the soldier that carry any feeling at all, and what I see is my own pain increased a million times. Our love lies still. I can almost believe he's sleeping. Wake up, please. We're not the same without you. Please... We need you. You've never let us down before.  
  
/Why don't you get up  
And rise again for me/  
"...a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.." That's all it is, my loves. We were born into the wrong time. War is such a silly thing. People are sorry, afterwards, but they never realise that sorry can never be enough when their own actions caused your pain. Such hypocrisy should not exist! You've never known peace. This is injustice.  
/What if the world were  
a little more perfect/  
If not for such injustice, you'd be laughing at me now. But I can't picture laughter right now. Not when Heero sits so stiffly at my side, rigor mortis ironically brought to life.  
/Would you stop crying or  
would you take the leap/  
And I can't help thinking that despite what the priest says, it wasn't time yet.   
  
/What if the world   
were a little more perfect/  
Somehow, without me really noticing, the sermon has ended and I've arrived next to the coffin. His bangs are in his eyes again. He loves it, but I prefer being able to see his face, so I brush them back. I want him to be alive. I want him to open his eyes, like he's done so many times, and look up at me blearily with a 'WHAT time is it?' expression, and laugh anyway and be alive.  
/Would you open your eyes  
and blink again for me/.  
Trowa drives us back to the apartment afterwards. Quatre is sitting between Heero and me, trying his best to start a conversation, but between my grunts and Heero's monosyllables he isn't having much luck. Eventually, he gives up, and we spend the rest of the ride in silence.  
I wake up in the middle of the night, vaguely aware that something was wrong. I'm all alone. I've gotten almost used to not having Duo draped over me like an extra blanket, even though the lack of his body heat still gives me goosebumps, but Heero should be in bed too. His light snores are missing, and all I can hear is the dim drone of the cars as the dead shift begins, and the wind whistling through from the balcony is chilled. I can see him, leaning on the railing, and I am standing in the doorway watching now. I know him.  
"Heero." It's all I can say. He turns to me, the pain in his eyes finally evident on his face and in the way his shoulders are hunched up around his chest.   
"I can't. Not anymore." His voice is hollow. "I can't take the pain. I can't take the fighting. It goes on, and on, and I can't win. I can't stop it. The only way to bring peace is to kill everyone, because otherwise there will always be war. There will always be fighting, and loss, and pain. And I... just can't. Even with you. Not without him."  
/What about friendship  
What about friends  
You said the whole world  
was against you  
And it all had to end/  
My eyes are pleading with him now. I still can't say anything. I can't even breathe. I'm losing him against a field of city lights and violent noises. There's a baby crying in the apartment below us. Finally there is evidence of my pain outside of me. The world is ending with a whimper at last. I find the breath to speak.  
"I love you."  
/What about love  
What about family  
What about all that  
you have to live for/  
He doesn't answer, except with his eyes - blue pools of agony, they seem to forgive me for not being enough. But they beg me for release. I can only whisper now, in a voice that startles me with its emptiness.  
"This is unjust."  
/What if the world were  
a little more perfect/  
He nods. He understands that I am not talking about him. Not anymore. He knows that I am railing against the existence of such pain, against my own helplessness to make it better.  
  
/Would you stop crying or  
would you take the leap/  
He's climbing on the railing now, and I can't make myself move to stop him. The cheap linoleum seems to have grown up around my ankles to keep me where I am. He's closing his eyes, and I know I'm about to lose him too, and all I can do is repeat myself.  
"This is unjust."  
/What if the world   
were a little more perfect  
Would you open your eyes  
and blink again for me/  
All that's there now is the wind, and the honking of cars, and a scream from below me as something hits the ground with a wet thump. The floor releases me, only to catch me again as I slump against the ground. I have no more bones, no more muscle. I am empty.  
/It isn't easy here without you  
Why did you leave me  
What am I supposed to do  
(without you)/  
~Owari~  
Look at the picture that was in my head while writing part of the opening:  
http://4dw.net/deathndragon/gwpics/fanart/dd.jpg 


	2. Author's Notes

Author's Notes  
  
  
  
With regards to 'Perfect', I have received several emails that, while being quite complimentary about the fic itself, expressed disbelief that Heero would kill himself. I would like to respond to those emails with my rationale for his suicide.  
  
My theory is this. Heero, as a young boy, was trained to not feel after the incident with the young girl and her puppy almost destroyed him. You'll notice that in 'Perfect', Wufei refers to Heero as two different people: The lover/dreamer and the soldier. The soldier is the one who does not feel, which is why Heero reverts to save himself from a pain that is far too strong for the lover to handle. You see, the lover is a newborn person. Every emotion is new to him, including grief.  
  
If you look at young children, everything bad that happens to them is the end of the world, because it is happening to them for the first time. They are protected from loss and grief because they don't understand death fully enough to feel it. Heero, on the other hand, is an emotional newborn who understands death, and has nobody to comfort him with euphemisms. He knows death intimately. The emotions brought on by loss are hard enough for an adult who has dealt with emotions for their whole life to handle – I think they would overwhelm him.  
  
However, Heero reverts to the soldier, who is stone – but the stone has been cracked, now, to let something softer through, and can no longer handle the intense pressure he places on it. I honestly believe that Heero would not be able to cope with the loss of something as precious to him as Duo.  
  
  
  
** If anybody would like to debate this, write it in a review, or email me. I'd like very much to know whether my argument was successful, or whether it's flawed. Thank you! :o) 


End file.
